Medal of Honor

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James C. McCloughan, 70, was a 23-year-old medic who over the course of a bloody, two-day battle — and despite being sprayed with shrapnel from a grenade and shot in the arm — returned over and over again to retrieve wounded soldiers from the battlefield under fire.

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a naturalization ceremony at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and also recognized Medal of Honor recipient Army Capt. Florent Groberg as an Outstanding American by Choice.

For nearly 70 years, Bonnyman's family remembered the handsome, adventurous man they had lost with what few artifacts they had left: his Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously for his efforts to hold back a Japanese counterattack; a large portrait, commissioned from an Italian oil painter; and a few black-and-white photographs taken during the assault on Betio.

Marine Cpl. William Thomas Perkins Jr. documented history as a combat photographer. Now his posthumously awarded Congressional Medal of Honor will go to Washington, D.C., to document his role in the Vietnam War.

President Barack Obama will award two soldiers the Medal of Honor for their bravery during World War I, part of an ongoing effort to recognize minority soldiers who may have been passed over because of their race or religion.

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Dismembered horses. Hundreds of Confederate dead and dying all around. It was the last day at Ground Zero of the grueling Battle of Gettysburg. And it was where 1st Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing spent his last moments alive.

When the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation signed a lease for waterfront property at Patriots Point about a year ago, the question on most minds was whether the nonprofit could raise $100 million to build the national museum. Now, the foundation is well ahead of its goal to raise $5 million by the end of the year.

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Running through sniper and mortar fire to retrieve wounded comrades and ammunition, fighting off Vietnamese soldiers, digging an escape tunnel to help his fellow soldiers survive a brutal assault, all while bleeding from multiple wounds — the full story of Bennie Adkins’ heroism during a deadly 38-hour battle could not fit in a 20-minute ceremony.

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For decades, Spc. 4 Donald P. Sloat’s mother thought he had died after stepping on a land mine in Vietnam. Then, in 2010, she heard the real story: Her son was killed saving the lives of the other men in his squad.

The late Rudy Hernandez, who received the Medal of Honor while fighting as an Army corporal in the Korean War, has been immortalized in a new exhibit at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in North Carolina.

As the 1,100 enlisted Marines packed in the base theater Monday morning waited for Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter to arrive, they plotted how to be the first to get a selfie with the newest Medal of Honor recipient and the second living Marine of their generation to receive the award.

World War I veteran George Seanor Robb earned the Medal of Honor, one of only four native Kansans in the "Great War" so recognized, but visitors who happened on his modest headstone in Gypsum Hill Cemetery never would know it. Until Friday.

Former Staff Sgt. Ryan M. Pitts, a forward observer who fought through critical injuries to help turn the tide in one of the deadliest attacks of the war in Afghanistan, will receive the Medal of Honor next month.

Marine Lance Cpls. Kyle Carpenter and Nicholas Eufrazio were standing watch on the roof of a mud and timber building being used as the command center at Patrol Base Dakota, in the Marjah district of Helmand province.

Sgt. Candelario Garcia Jr. received a posthumous Medal of Honor on March 18 in a mass ceremony to recognize soldiers who might have been overlooked for the highest honor because of their skin color or religious affiliation.

“If you look closely at [White] on his way to work, you'll notice a piece of the war that he carries with him, tucked under his shirt sleeve: a stainless steel bracelet around his wrist, etched with the names of his six fallen comrades, who will always be with him,” Obama said Tuesday during the White House ceremony.

Three Afghanistan veterans whose battlefield bravery earned them the nation’s highest military honor received new recognition Wednesday when their names were unveiled on the state Capitol’s Medal of Honor monument.

A LAST ENEMY OVERCOME

The 24 soldiers honored in a historic ceremony at the White House fought in World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam with all the ferocious skill and selfless bravery required of Medal of Honor recipients.

Spc. Santiago J. Erevia had orders to tend the wounded while the rest of the platoon pressed on attacking. But when he and the men under his care came under fire from four nearby Viet Cong bunkers on May 21, 1969, Erevia didn’t dive for cover.

A day before a White House ceremony at which 24 Army veterans are to be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama, Stars and Stripes talked with one of the three living recipients-to-be and several relatives and friends of those who are to be honored posthumously.

A former Borinqueneer said the decision to give Master Sgt. Juan E. Negron the Medal of Honor was a sign the country was beginning to understand the sacrifices made by Puerto Rico's renowned 65th Infantry Regiment.

President Barack Obama reportedly will award medically retired Marine Lance Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter the Medal of Honor later this year in recognition of Carpenter’s actions during a 2010 grenade attack in Afghanistan.

For extraordinary acts of courage during the D-Day invasion of World War II, Walter Ehlers received the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. It changed his life. Ehlers, 92, died Thursday at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Long Beach, Calif.

Their heroic deeds in 1969 earned them the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for gallantry. Forty-four years later, they're heroes again after a Pentagon panel scrutinized a raft of combat records and decided they deserved the Medal of Honor.

Cpl. Rudy Hernandez cheated death on the battlefields of Korea 62 years ago. But the Medal of Honor recipient and Fayetteville resident couldn't live forever. The 82-year-old Hernandez died early Saturday, according to friends.

Nearly four years after a bloody Afghanistan ambush that left five American troops dead, including the son of a Riverview woman, U.S. Central Command is still ensnared in an ongoing controversy of why it took so long to award an Army captain a Medal of Honor for his role in that battle.

Medal of Honor recipient Clarence Sasser was further immortalized at Texas A&M on Thursday when he became the first black veteran and first Vietnam veteran to be enshrined in the university's Hall of Honor.

Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus recommended that the Medal of Honor nomination of former Army Capt. William Swenson be downgraded to a lower award, according to a Pentagon investigation that failed to resolve how Swenson’s papers then disappeared instead of being sent up the chain of command.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel apologized Wednesday to former Army Capt. William Swenson for the mishandling of his Medal of Honor nomination four years after his heroism in a deadly six-hour battle in Afghanistan.

In his memoir, Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer describes how he switched from his machine gun to his rifle and back as he mowed down a swarm of Taliban from the vehicle’s turret. But videos shot by Army medevac helicopter crewmen show no Taliban in that vicinity.

A Pentagon investigation into how a Medal of Honor nomination was “lost” — possibly because of an improper effort to kill the award — is focused on its mishandling by members of the chain of command that included retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and other senior U.S. commanders.

The U.S. House of Representatives recognized all living Medal of Honor recipients Wednesday, reciting the acts of bravery that went far above and beyond the call of duty.
Hawaii is down to just one still living here: retired Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Allan Kellogg Jr. of Kailua.

Monday, Ty Carter will become the fifth living Medal of Honor recipient for actions in Afghanistan. Only 12 men from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been honored with the award, singled out for “conspicuous gallantry” and “selfless courage” on the battlefield.

After parachuting onto the field next to the Fort Marcy Recreation Complex on Monday morning, Sgt. First Class Leroy Petry said there’s no better way to see the American flag flying in the wind than to watch one floating to earth while attached to a parachutist.

When the Congressional Medal of Honor Society comes to Newtown, Conn. Monday to honor as heroes the six women who sacrificed their lives on Dec. 14 trying to protect the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School, there will be plenty of understanding of what it takes to be a hero.

Hailed as a “shepherd in combat,” an Army chaplain who tended to wounded U.S. troops during the Korean War despite imminent capture was awarded the Medal of Honor on Thursday, more than 60 years after he died as a prisoner of war.

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society, which brings together living Medal of Honor recipients, will be holding its annual convention next September in Gettysburg, Pa., the site of the Civil War battle for which 63 people earned the nation's highest military honor.